Having been releasing music since 2006 (Pigs & TV EP) the band got some notoriety from their second self-titled album in 2008 that featured the popular singles Muscle Junkie and Jesus Stole My Girlfriend. However, a lot of the attention that album was garnered was generated by the fact it was released on Ecstatic Peace! – Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore’s record label.
The signing also saw the band move to America and undertake a gruelling touring schedule that saw the band touring with many credible contemporaries like The Bronx and Cancer Bats but, due to Ecstatic Peace! being owned by Universal, Violent Soho also toured with Thirty Seconds To Mars – ‘nuff said.
“You get on a label like Ecstatic Peace! and they get you touring with those bands and then by the time their parent company Universal/Motown get their hands on you we had to have a stab at touring with bands like 30 Seconds To Mars and some other really shit radio bands we had to tour with,” explains singer, guitarist and primary songwriter Luke Boerdam.
Last year at Ding Dong Lounge when Violent Soho were supporting Cloud Nothings and in a conversation with your correspondent, Violent Soho’s guitarist James Tidswell expressed that during the 30 Seconds To Mars tour the band felt like they had hit a low point and it was time to move home.
“The 30 Seconds To Mars tour was the last tour we did so I think what James was referring to is that we got to the end of the 18 month stint and we were like, ‘Fuck this, let’s go home.’ I mean the album was out and we had two singles, had toured Canada and America multiple times and we’re home sick,” Boerdam sheds some light on this seemingly profound moment.
“Four band members and one tour manager were living in a maximum of two hotel so I wasn’t getting any writing done and it got too tiring and there was also a feeling the label had lost direction of their idea with us which was kinda confirmed with us ending on a 30 Seconds To Mars tour,” surmises Boerdam on the American dream gone wrong.
However, moving back home somewhat defeated actually had a huge silver lining for the group. Not only did they find a new label in Mushroom subsidiary I Oh You but the material written, beginning with the double a-side and culminating with Hungry Ghost, featured a sophistication and cohesion that lacked on their previous releases.
Boerdam now tackles the difficult task of drawing a line between the old Violent Soho sound and the new. “I agree and I disagree that our sound has changed. We’ve always had the mentality of keeping our core values in place as it has been the same four members just after high school. The values are only making albums that we want to make and not listening to anyone else’s bullshit.
“Working with I Oh You was such a good thing for us because we really stand our grand on how this band works. We said to them, ‘We’re going to record a record with a super talented albeit unknown producer [Bryce Moorhead] in a shed in Brisbane over six weeks so we can experiment and get the sound exactly how we want it’,” states Boerdam. “I’d like to think with Hungry Ghost it is a little bit different to the other bands out there that are placed in our genre. I think the whole American experience made us frustrated about how rushed it felt so with this record we made sure we had the time to get the sound exactly how we felt we should be sounding – so yeah, there is a different sound but it came from within.”
Finally, Boerdam explains that the band expects fans to lose their shot at their upcoming Big Day Out performance – getting the crowd to mosh is one of the band’s core values.
“A core element of Violent Soho – and you can hear it in the name – is that we are always going to bring an aggressive show. You can call it a throwback to ‘90s when people used to jump around but we are never going to bring a show that sees people standing there with folded arms.
BY DAN WATT
